Let’s not forget albums by Wilbur de Paris, from Ivy dixieland’s throne at Jimmy Ryan’s and New Orleans goes to Princeton and Hanover via Stan Rubin’s Tigertown Five and Larry Elliot’s Dartmouth Indian Chiefs.

I sincerely wish I “got” jazz. It’s similar to poetry as I know that there is something good there, I just can’t feel it. It doesn’t move me. I think that it’s over my head. I did however enjoy the Ken Burns Jazz Doc.

A music revival swept through Ivy League colleges in the 1950s, and it wasn’t the new rhythms of rock ’n’ roll that turned kids on. It was classic jazz of the 1920s. You wouldn’t find jazz taught as a college course, as it is today, but the sound of hot jazz from the 1920s was the preferred ‘party music’ for many college students.

Fraternities imported top talent like Sidney Bechet and Eddie Condon from New York for their functions. And on holidays, Ivy League campuses emptied out and re-adjourned in jazz clubs along 52nd Street and in the Village.

The dress code was chinos, argyle socks and penny loafers, or Harris tweed blazers and button-downs. Whether your school actually belonged to the Ivy League or not, everyone wanted to dress ‘Ivy League.’

Jazz wasn’t entirely for beatniks in the 1950s. When I was at prep school in the early ’50s, it represented rebellion and, more importantly, was something our parents didn’t like. Although none of us had ever been to Greenwich Village, we knew it was the place to go for jazz. It seemed a veritable Land of Oz.

In the late 1950s, when I was at college, we’d go down to the Village for jazz as many weekends as we could. We’d dress exactly as Christian notes above, because, except for formal wear, those were the only clothes we had! Those were the days!!!

True art and beauty can be appreciated with little or no introduction or background. Rembrandt and Bach, for example, can be enjoyed by anyone, but you have to be “educated” to get Pollack (etc.) or a lot of modern jazz.

Poetry is a little more challenging, in that you have to know the vocabulary (which is part of why Shakespeare is challenging for us). However, once you have that, the beauty is accessible. Again, in contrast, you have to be “educated” to get Ginsberg and his ilk.

So don’t worry if you don’t get jazz, as long as you do get classical music.

OCBD: I think you could “get” Jazz if you start with some works conducive to enjoyment by the uninitiated. As a teen, I was inducted by the very accessible “Giant Steps” album by John Coltrane even though the “A Love Supreme” album was way too over my head.

Henry: I think Jazz is best understood as a great example of music that does not require prerequisite knowledge; like Beethoven it makes mainly emotional appeals to its audience.

The harsh comments about jazz, such as the previous one by “just me” reflect the feelings of those of us who feel no connection whatsoever between a manner of dress that respects tradition and a form of “music” that rebels against traditional forms. It disturbs us as much as flipflops, polyester, and you name it.

The traditions of clothes that lead to Ivy aren’t that much older than jazz. If you dress Ivy or Trad or what have you, you’re respecting traditions that stretch back to perhaps 1910. Sure, some jazz is very iconoclastic, but if you’re going to object to the way it “rebels against traditional forms” (as Labrador does), then shouldn’t you be in knee breeches and court shoes?

For what it’s worth, I’m not particularly into jazz, but I listen to it, which means I probably listen to more jazz than anybody else I know who doesn’t play it. My college has a fair number of free shows I can attend, so that’s helped.

I think what many overseas Ivy enthusiasts need to understand is that jazz has become a rather niche music genre in America. Some small number of Americans are really deep into it while the rest know relatively little about it.
I’m in my 40’s and remember seeing jazz albums in my parents’ collection. But by the time I was a kid in the 70’s, they were no longer listening to them. I can’t say that I’ve had anyone close to me who was an enthusiast.

“Comment by Dutch Uncle — April 23, 2013 @ 5:27 am
I was at college in the 50s.
Jazz was for beatnıks”.

ALL Jazzor only a particular type of jazz?
Cole Porter or George Gershwin are beatniks?
When Fred Astaire sing and dance “putting on the Ritz” is a nasty rebel?
This is subversive?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVCDZaApwV8

“The song “Summertime” is the best-known selection from Porgy and Bess. Other popular and frequently recorded songs from the opera include “It Ain’t Necessarily So”, “Bess, You Is My Woman Now”, “I Loves You Porgy” and “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin'”. The opera is admired for Gershwin’s innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms.”

“The music itself reflects his (Gershwin’s) New York jazz roots, but also draws on southern black traditions. Gershwin modeled the pieces after each type of folk song which the composer knew about; jubilees, blues, praying songs, street cries, work songs, and spirituals are blended with traditional arias and recitatives.[35]”

Comment by Dutch Uncle
“Nobody at the time associated Porter, Gershwin, or Astaire with jazz. That was the mainstream pop music of the time”.

But Porter, Gershwin, and Astaire (and Sinatra,Ella Fitzgerald,Mel Tormè,Nat King Cole,and many others) ARE jazz.
One of best jazz album of early 50s is the Fred Astaire’s”The Astaire story” a four-volume album with a quintet led by Oscar Peterson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astaire_Story

Mainstram music at time WAS jazz (a part doo woop groups and latina music like Mambo and Cha Cha).

I think that Dutch Uncle mean that after WW-II some type of jazz music,like “Bebop” and “Cool jazz” were considered by straight people in 50s “music for beatniks.
Ma Jazz music is more of Bebop and Cool.
Are several genres under the label “jazz”.

It would be nice if the origins of jazz were easily pegged but they’re not. I was not the only pianist/composer at Juilliard (no kidding, 33 years ago, my first career) who thought that—and I’m not kidding—Beethoven had first planted the seeds of jazz rhythms and harmonies in Sonata No. 32, Opus 111, the second movement. If you don’t know it, listen to what happens about a third of way into that movement. Also, listen to jazz material in certain Debussy Preludes and Etudes. The first Etude in C major is a good example but not even the best.

As for “American jazz proper,” it’s hard to say that it’s one thing or comes from one place. The question is best put to a musicologist but here are some random ideas. There is some jazz which undoubtedly has it’s origins in black music. But it gets very difficult to assign a single progenitor when you start asking questions like what separates a Gershwin tune from “serious” jazz. (If you think Gershwin didn’t think he was writing jazz, listen to his Three Preludes.) What we think of today as old pop tunes—think of Jimmy Van Heusen—really take their harmonic structure from more traditional classical music. However, put a simple song like “Young and Foolish” in the hands of Bill Evans with Tony Bennett singing, and I’d argue that’s jazz, and high art in the bargain. Evans’s chromatic treatment of the chord progressions and his voice leading is genius. An old girlfriend from Juilliard who is now a professor of piano at U of A pointed out that Evans’s prowess as an accompanist (which she is) will rival anyone. For me, Erroll Garner is the pianist of choice. But, it’s just a matter of taste. Again, I was a pianist and composer, not a musicologist, so I’m sure there are those who would disagree with me.

As for CC’s nod to Karlheinz Stockhausen and someone’s mention of modern jazz and the need to be “educated” in order to appreciate, that’s another question entirely. And that subject get’s really ugly.

I don’t know anything about Marxism, but, unlike “Henry”, I have heard of slavery, racial discrimination, and lynchings. If that’s not oppression, I need a new dictionary. What is the reason for this refusal to admit the Black origins of jazz?

I’m not denying the oppression. I’m disagreeing with the oppressor/oppressed paradigm.

When I studied US history way back when, Marxism had not yet made its way into the curriculum. While I do not recall the exact phrasing or analysis of slavery, it was not Marxist, i.e., it was not couched in terms of evil white oppressors and innocent black oppressed.

How should we understand lynching? First off, let me state my unequivocal abhorrence and condemnation of the practice. Nothing I say below should be construed as support or justification. Still, we can look at it as an object of study.

Some facts:
* Lynching was practiced throughout the US.
* The majority of lynch victims outside of the South were white.
* 6% of all lynch mobs were black.
* Between 1880 and 1950, about 50 blacks per year were lynched. (50 too many, but not the epidemic some assume.)

Why did lynch mobs do what they did? It was nearly always in response to some heinous crime. It was done in times and places when it was easier to break someone out of jail than it is now. It was done in places where the criminal justice system was unreliable. While it would be folly to deny the racial nature it had taken by the 1920s, it would be equal folly to deny that it had virtually disappeared by the middle of the 20th century.

P.S.: I don’t care about jazz or its origins. That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. Even so, did you read A.E.W. Mason’s post? Fascinating.

@Henry
You are so predictable. I knew you’d jump for the bait and start telling me about white victims of lynching mobs.
If I were to talk about black contributions to American music in general, I’m sure you’d provide statistics showing that black contributions to crime far outnumbered their contribution to culture. How do you manage to be an Ivy style adherent considering the Jewish contributions to our preferred sartorial genre?

I’m waiting for the Marxist analysis of why Jewish contributions to our prefered sartorial genre is a result of cruelty and oppression. Of course they might have just been skilled, innovative, proud of it, and found an opportunity to feed their families.